I walked back slowly toward the castle. It was incredible to me that only the evening before, after turning the young count into a frog, I had imagined myself a competent wizard. This was my worst failure ever. I had never before managed to destroy half a castle.
One would have expected, I thought, that a royal wizard would be able to deal with a product of wild magic without coming as close to getting himself and everyone else killed as I had done. For all I knew, there was a simple spell against dragons, taught in one of the lectures I had missed. I would certainly have to apologize abjectly to the king and queen. As I reached the castle and crossed the drawbridge, I wondered if I would have to resign as well.
I was highly startled when, as I stepped into the courtyard, the queen threw herself into my arms, heedless of the dragon’s blood, and began showering me with kisses. I would have been able to respond more enthusiastically if I had not been so surprised.
In a few seconds she pulled herself away. “Oh, excuse me, I don’t want to seem forward, but I’m so grateful! You’re our hero! You saved Yurt!” Maybe, I thought, I would not have to resign after all.
The rest of the people in the castle who could still walk were mobbed around me, laughing and jumping to get a better look at me. “Our hero! The savior of Yurt! He killed the dragon!”
“Well, yes, but it took me an awful long time to do it!” I protested. “Don’t thank someone who almost let the castle be destroyed! The old wizard is the real hero.”
They pulled the old wizard forward. “What are you talking about?” he said irritably. “Don’t go putting your blame on me!”
“But you’re the hero,” I said. “You’re the one who distracted the dragon long enough so that I could spear him! I never could have gotten close enough without your illusions.”
“Took you long enough to do the business, too,” he grunted, which was actually my assessment as well.
The king was checking the outer walls, but most of us went into the hall, where several of the wounded were already bandaged. Dominic was groaning steadily. “I wonder if the pigeons are still alive and flying, so that we could send for the doctor,” said the constable, and hurried off to the south tower to see.
The hall had escaped much better than I had feared. The chimney had collapsed into the fireplace, and several of the windows were broken, but I was pleased to see that the Christmas tree was untouched.
“Well, I guess we’ll just all have to squeeze into the kitchens for Christmas dinner!” said the queen.
“It’s going to be hours late,” said the cook.
“I must say,” said the young count, who had not said anything since the dragon first appeared, “that I think this affair was all handled very sloppily. Castles should have established procedures to deal with emergencies.” But no one paid him any attention-though I thought I heard one of the stable boys make a sound like a bullfrog just before he dissolved into hysterical giggles.
The queen stayed by my side. I was beginning to wish I had paid more attention while she was kissing me, but she showed no signs of starting again. “I’m afraid you’ve gotten dragon’s blood on your dress,” I said, as a hint that I had noticed how close she had been, only moments before. “And I feel terrible about my velvet suit, just after you and the king gave it to me.”
She smiled. “I don’t mind about my dress.” I wondered if this was because it was the dress that was the same color as the duchess’s dress. “We’ll order you a new suit at once. I can see we’ll have to order quite a few things in the next few days. Do you want midnight blue again, or would you prefer a different color?’
“One just like this would be exactly right.”
I lowered myself into a chair, feeling more bruised than I had originally thought. The king was back and talking to the constable about arranging for repairs.
“Come here, Master,” I called to the old wizard, and he came toward me, frowning. He had the calico cat in his arms, but all the cat’s fur was standing on end and its eyes were wild. “I want to thank you for saving my life. I can’t thank you for saving the castle, but only because it’s not my castle.”
“At least you took advantage of what little magic you knew,” he said grumpily.
“Also I wanted to ask you something,” I said, starting to feel more cheerful. If the king did not think Yurt was irredeemably destroyed, maybe it had not been. After all, he had already been out to make sure his rose garden had not suffered. “I’ve heard that being bathed in dragon’s blood makes one’s skin harder than steel. Is this true?’
The queen excused herself to talk to the cook, who was showing no signs of starting dinner.
The wizard snorted. “I don’t know what kind of old witch’s story they tell you at that school, but all dragon blood does is make you stink. You’d better take a bath. And that reminds me. You there!” to the constable. “You’d better get the dragon’s body cut up and dragged away from the castle right away. It will start rotting in a few hours, and the castle will become unbearable.”
The constable sent out some of the young men with saws. I decided I was enough of a wounded hero not to have to join in.
“I’m going to take a bath right away, Master,” I said. “But before I do, I want to talk to you about that dragon.”
“I’d warned you what all this loose wizardry would come to.”
The hubbub of the hall was all down at the far end, and no one was near us. “That dragon didn’t just come by itself. That dragon was summoned.”
He thought about this for a moment in silence. “So who do you think summoned it? You’re not accusing me, are you?”
“No. But I think you know far more about what’s happened in Yurt in the last three years than you’ve told me, and I think the dragon’s coming is part of that. Did you know that your magic locks were gone from the north tower?”
“I found out this morning. Went out to inspect them while you were flirting with the duchess after breakfast.”
So much for my efforts to keep an eye on the wizard!
“Why didn’t you tell me, young whipper-snapper? Were they just broken today?”
“They’ve been gone since I first arrived. I didn’t dare tell you because I was afraid you’d blame me, and you’d said there was nothing up in the tower anyway. Master, you’ve got to tell me. What’s escaped from the tower?”
For a minute I was afraid he would say nothing. He kept patting the cat, which was gradually calming down, although it clearly did not like the smell of blood on me. At last he said, “Well, you’re Royal Wizard of Yurt now, and I’m retired, so it’s your problem.” And he told me.
Even though I had been expecting this, my veins turned to ice. I would have to get into a hot bath before I died, but I knew I would never have another chance to talk like this to the old wizard. “How long has it been here?”
“I first found it three years ago.”
I decided it would be undiplomatic to remind the old wizard that he had categorically denied any supernatural presence in the castle while he was Royal Wizard.
“I don’t know who summoned it to Yurt in the first place,” he continued, “but finding it wasn’t very difficult, once it arrived. The old chaplain, this one’s predecessor, found it too. He blamed me for it, even though I’d never imagined to myself that the powers of darkness were romantic-not like you!”
I nodded, not daring to protest.
“Interfering old busy-body! He tried to catch it himself, with his bell and candle. Pretty ineffective, I thought. No wonder it killed him.”
He must have seen the horror on my face, even though his eyes were directed toward the cat, for he snorted. “I’m sure the old priest died with his soul ‘intact,’ if that’s what you and your friend the young chaplain are worried about. He was chasing it around the parapets, and he fell off. Nobody knew how he’d fallen, except for me, and I didn’t see any reason to say. Terrible accident, they all agreed. You can imagine I didn’t tell that young priest anything about it!”
“But you caught it?” I said in a low voice, as he stopped and did not start again.
“It took me close to three years. It took all the magic I knew, and then some. But I finally cornered it in my study and put the binding spells on it. It had been out far too long for me to send it back, but at least I could bind it so it couldn’t move.”
Except that it had moved.
“I locked the tower so the person who had summoned it couldn’t get in to free it, and, just in case it did break loose, I put separate spells around the outside of the castle, so it couldn’t cross the moat.”
“Did Dominic know about this?”
The old wizard glanced at me sideways. “How did you guess that? He did. I needed his help, near the end. He’s not the person I would have chosen, but he’d somehow already found out about it. He was the one who did the drawing while I held it down with my spells.”
The cat was almost asleep on the wizard’s lap now. “We caught it just in time, too. I was afraid black magic was starting to kill the king, so I was pleased to see him so much better when I arrived yesterday. Maybe he’s hoping for that baby boy again!”
The wizard stood up abruptly, scooped up the startled cat, and settled it on his shoulder. “Well, young wizard, it’s your castle and your problem now. Capturing it once wore me out so thoroughly I decided to retire at once. Catching it again is the job for a youngster with fancy magic from the City.”
He started stumping toward the door.
“Where are you going?” said the king. “You can’t be leaving already! We haven’t even had Christmas dinner!”
“I’d rather eat my vegetables at peace in the woods than eat a fancy dinner to the smell of dragon’s blood!”
I turned toward my own chambers, in search of a bath, without waiting to see the end of the argument, for I already knew how it would end. At least I was pleased that the old wizard’s hand, with which he was gesturing, wore the king’s Christmas ring.
Lying in the bathtub, completely submerged except for my face, I could feel my bruised muscles starting to relax, but I did not dare relax too much. The old wizard had clearly guessed more than he had told me. But even he might not know why the dragon had appeared today.
As long as I stayed in the tub, I imagined, I would not have to deal with this. After all, evil had been loose in the castle for three years, without permanent damage to Yurt, so maybe another three years wouldn’t matter much either.
But I could not persuade myself of this, because I knew it was not true. The old wizard had known that too, and that was why he had returned abruptly to the forest, before I could enlist his aid.
The bath water was cold. I surged up and out of the tub, reaching for a towel. This was my kingdom and my problem.